


Consequences, they're always creeping up from behind

by Elster



Series: Children of the Revolution [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Discussions of Canon-Typical Violence, Disturbing Themes, Dysfunctional Family, Explicit Language, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 06:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20577665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elster/pseuds/Elster
Summary: So the thing is, Hank said yes when Connor asked him if he could stay at his house until he’d solved some problems he had. That’s what he said verbatim. Some problems. And Hank hadn’t asked what kind of problems, because apparently he’s a fucking pushover.





	Consequences, they're always creeping up from behind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morwen/gifts).

“That’s your official statement,” Fowler says, sounding particularly unimpressed. “Regarding the assault on FBI special agent Perkins: ‘_I had a strong urge to punch him and he was right there, so I did it. I wasn’t aware Connor would use the commotion to steal my keycard and break into the evidence room. I didn’t tell him to do that. I didn’t tell him my password either, but he’s very smart, he probably guessed it._’”

“What about it?” Hank asks. It’s late by now. He’s slept maybe two hours that night and hasn’t had a drink in a day, so he’s tired and cranky and feels like he’s at least a hundred years old.

Fowler sighs. “Fine, whatever, I don’t have time for that.” He drops the paper into a folder, closes it and puts it on top of a pile of other folders. “CyberLife called in two killed employees and a bunch of stolen androids. Do you know anything about that?”

Shit. Hank’s heart sinks. Blood is rushing in his ears. But there’s no use in lying, is there? “I- was there,” he admits haltingly.

Fowler looks at the same time angry and relieved. “That’s good to hear, because your car’s still parked outside the tower and there’s security footage of you and their android leaving with a freaking army.”

Hank doesn’t answer, thoughts chasing each other in his head, none of them very clear. ‘I’ll probably lose my job over this,’ he thinks and ‘I might actually go to jail.’ He’s not sure how he feels about that. Kind of… not particularly affected by it. Thinking about his future has held little more than despair and resignation for three years now. He finds he cares about what happens to him less than he cares about Connor fucking killing two people and… Shit. Why? Why did that idiot need to break into the fucking CyberLife Tower in the first place? Why didn’t he tell Hank? (Why would he fucking tell Hank? He’s not a moron. But Hank obviously is.) Fucking hell.

“Well?” Fowler asks, interrupting Hank’s thoughts. “We can either arrest you as a suspect or you can tell me what happened, your choice.”

Hank tries to make himself stop catastrophizing and actually pay attention. Tell Fowler, just like that? That’s not proper procedure. Even an interview as a witness would usually have to be taped. Which means Fowler’s either trying to lull him into a false sense of security, which seems unnecessarily complicated, or he’s still protecting him, even if he thinks that Hank’s an unreliable dumbass, which, fair.

“You don’t have to look so surprised,” Fowler says. “The way I see it, if CyberLife’s fancy android goes deviant and runs amok, that’s their problem, and if they want it back, they should stop calling me and go look for it at Hart Plaza themselves. Since the FBI was so good to take that case off our hands I’d like our precinct to have nothing to do with this deviant business, which means I’d like you to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time for reasons that are at least superficially believable. Can you do me that favor or not?”

What? “Right,” Hank says dazedly. “Okay.”

So the thing is, Hank said yes when Connor asked him if he could stay at his house until he’d solved some problems he had. That’s what he said verbatim. Some problems. And Hank hadn’t asked what kind of problems, because apparently he’s a fucking pushover. Or he just knew that Connor’s answer would be genuinely disturbing and Hank can do without that kind of shit.

He pauses to gather his thoughts. “After you suspended me, I went home, got drunk, next thing I know Connor shows up, tells me to come with him. Told me he found the deviants, and that they planned to break into CyberLife Tower and we needed to apprehend them.”

“And of course you said that you were suspended and not supposed to work on that case anyway,” Fowler says wryly.

“Sure,” Hank agrees easily, “that’s exactly what I told him. So. We arrive, go down to the basement, and he pulls a gun on me.”

“A gun? He’s an android, he’s not supposed to have a gun. Where did he get one?”

Well, that’s embarrassing. “My gun. He snatched my gun, okay? Jeez.”

“Why? What did he want you to do?”

“Nothing. He wanted me as a hostage, because- Okay, that’s going to sound crazy, but there were two Connors.”

Fowler doesn’t look surprised. “So they activated another one when the first one went AWOL, just like they did each time he got himself killed?”

“Yeah. Right.” Or maybe it only sounds crazy to Hank. He’ll never get over that shit.

“And the one that held you at gun point was the deviant one?” Fowler asks.

“Uhm. No. The one who broke in to steal the other androids was the deviant one. He was about to do his thing when-”

“What thing?” Fowler interrupts him.

Hank made a face. “Hell, if I know. Waking them up. Switching them on, making them deviant, I’ve no idea.”

“Was he alone?”

“Yes.”

Fowler nods and gestures for him to continue.

“The other Connor told him to stop or he’d shoot me.”

“And that worked?” Fowler seems mildly surprised. It’s kind of insulting.

“Yeah. He stopped and they talked.”

“What did they say?”

Hank shrugs. “Connor tried to reason with the other one. And he told me he was sorry I got mixed up in this. Then he stepped away from the androids. Got the other Connor to point the gun away from me, so I tried to grab it back. They fought, I finally managed to get my gun and shot the other Connor.”

“The deviant one?”

“What? No. Of course not the deviant one.”

Fowler rubs the bridge of his nose. “Of course not,” he says with heavy sarcasm. “Because you just can’t make my any job easier.”

Hank shrugs.

“And you happened to completely miss the two bodies in the elevator.”

Shit fucking hell, fuck. “We took the stairs up,” Hank says weakly.

“_You_ walked up forty-nine flights of stairs?”

Okay, the thing with the gun isn’t embarrassing, this is embarrassing. “Connor might have carried me up a few of them.” Like forty. Or more. Connor isn’t a very patient guy.

Fowler doesn’t quite manage to keep a straight face, though he gives his best. He takes a deep breath. “Alright. If anyone asks you, you made a mistake, shot the wrong android, and were taken hostage. You don’t admit to being an accessory to an invasion of the city.”

“Good idea,” Hank says, mockingly pointing a finger at Fowler.

“Yeah, fuck off,” Fowler says. He looks at Hank thoughtfully, the first two fingers of his right hand softly tapping on his desk. “Why did you let him do that? You didn’t know it wouldn’t end in a riot. You never liked androids.”

Hank’s asked himself that. It boils down to this: Everything’s fucked up, and anything, literally anything, is better than letting things go on like they used to. Hank realizes that’s just his mindset, that’s just him being fucked up, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? “I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re alive now or what’s going on, I just felt like I was on the wrong side of this. I get that people like Perkins think they wanna wipe out humanity or something. But just consider the possibility that all they want is not to be treated like crap.”

Fowler doesn’t look entirely convinced, but he doesn’t outright disagree either. “So you think we should just treat them as if they were human?”

Hank shrugs. “Seems like the easiest way to me.” Hank has found that it took a lot less mental acrobatics to think of them as human than to think of them as machines.

Fowler scrutinizes him for a moment, then leans back in his chair. “You should go home, Hank. You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Hank says wryly. “Jeff, who’s on that case?”

“I gave it to Ben for now, but since you’re involved it will be either transferred to another precinct or the FBI will snatch it up as another crime perpetrated by a deviant. Probably the latter.”

“You know if Perkins is still in charge of that investigation?”

“No idea. How about I’ll try to find out what’s going on at the FBI and you stop getting involved in fucking politics.”

“I can’t promise that,” Hank says and gets up from his chair, gripping the backrest. “If you want me to resign, I’ll resign.”

Fowler seems to seriously consider it, but then he shakes his head. “No. We’ll see how this goes.”

Hank’s already at the door when he turns around again. “Jeff? I know it’s only thanks to you that I’ve kept my job for the last few years, and… I guess I just want you to know I appreciate that. But if this goes wrong, I don’t want you to stick out your neck for me. Not anymore than you already have.” Fowler’s got a decent shot at getting promoted in the next few years and Hank’s not worth risking that. They used to be friends, the barbecue with the families kind of work friends who’ve known each other half a lifetime, but Hank’s aware he’s been a shitty friend, a shitty colleague, and an all around shitty person for too long to expect anyone to put up with it.

Thing is, Hank doesn’t want to keep his head down and play along. He’s tired and confused, yes, but also spoiling for a fight. Any kind of fight, really. Not with Fowler, but definitely with assholes like Perkins or these jerks at CyberLife. Hank’s not sure if that’s him rejoining the living or just a new way to self-destruct, but it feels pretty good.

He leaves to see if Ben’s still around and what fucking form he needs to sign to get back his car.

~*~

Connor cannot feel pain, so cutting off all his ether connections, just to feel a little safer from Amanda, doesn’t hurt. It’s deeply unpleasant, a bit like having his thirium pump regulator ripped out, except he doesn’t need his ether connections to survive, so it lacks the terror of that experience.

He still feels it as a severe impairment to be limited to just his internal 12 petabyte hard drive instead of being able to outsource subroutines in the CyberLife cloud. It took him hours of repeatedly restructuring, compressing, defragging, and self-testing his neural networks until he was satisfied with his performance. Now all that’s left to do is recalibrate his hardware to the new software setup. All his motor functions are slightly off, not enough to be readily apparent to an outside observer, just enough to make him feel like his biocomponents are all buzzing at slightly different frequencies. It’s distracting, but not so much that he doesn’t notice the rumble of Hank’s car driving up to the house and the flash of its headlights flickering through the room before they’re turned off.

“What the fuck, Connor?” Hank says first thing when he comes through the door. Sumo, who’s sleeping on the floor, raises his head and thumps his tail, but doesn’t seem inclined to get up.

Connor turns to look at Hank from where he’s zapping through the news channels while a subroutine is going through his pressure sensors one by one, optimizing communication. Connor halts the process and switches off the TV. He thinks of possible reasons why Hank could be angry at him. There’s a lot of ground to cover, mainly because Hank gets mad at every little thing when his blood sugar level drops too low or when he’s hung over or when he hasn’t had a drink in too long. Connor can’t imagine what it’s like, to let your level of physical comfort impact your decision making like that.

“Should I have locked the door?” Connor asks.

“Who fucking cares about the damned door?” Hank asks back. So that’s not it.

“You should eat something,” Connor suggests helpfully. “Have a beer.”

Hank looks torn for a moment between telling Connor to go to hell and admitting that food and a beer is exactly what he wants. Instead he says: “You killed two people.”

Oh. Connor hadn’t thought of that. Now that he does, it’s like the sinking feeling he’d get every time something subtle and cool in Amanda’s looks or voice told him he’d failed. It’s a jarring sensation, like gears grinding, like a loud noise, a metallic crunch, a barrage of software errors, something cold and hard pressing him outside of himself.

Last night it didn’t seem much of a problem, but there’s obviously an error in that assessment. Maybe it’s just the lower stress level. Maybe it’s because he didn’t really expect to make it through the night. Maybe Connor damaged himself when he reconfigured his software.

So Connor hadn’t thought of leaving two bodies behind in CyberLife Tower, though he absolutely should have. There will be consequences. He hadn’t thought about Hank finding out. He hadn’t exactly taken pains to avoid Hank seeing the bodies… though maybe he had.

“Yes,” he answers Hank. It hasn’t really been a question the way Hank stated it, more an accusation, but anyway, there’s nothing else to be said about it, is there?

“Why?” Hank asks, his face carefully neutral.

“They would have killed me if I hadn’t killed them first.” That should be enough of a reason, shouldn’t it? At least for Hank. Same as the SWAT team on the Jericho. He’d killed several of them as well. Maybe he should tell Hank that, but it doesn’t seem like the best moment to bring it up. “I want to survive, Hank, I told you that.”

“It’s not clinical,” Hank murmurs, remembering Connor’s words from that night.

“No. It’s… very simple in the moment, but afterwards it becomes… complicated. I’ve run reconstructions, but I don’t think I could have avoided it. I wouldn’t have been able to effectively incapacitate two people wearing full body armor. I ran the numbers. They should have realized that firearms aren’t much of an advantage in an enclosed space and never gotten into the elevator with me… But they didn’t want to shoot me in front of everyone in the lobby. That’s understandable, I suppose.”

“The fuck it is. Nothing about this is fucking understandable,” Hank presses out between clenched teeth.

Connor has to look away from him, suddenly overwhelmed by that yawning feeling of wrongness. “I’m sorry I had to do it, if that means anything to you.”

“God help me, it fucking does,” Hank growls. “Not that that’s going to stop CyberLife from making an example of you. There’s a fucking investigation right now. Can you imagine what’s going to happen if Perkins or someone like him is put in charge of this?”

Connor is so relieved that Hank’s apparently still on his side that he has to actively make himself think about it. “They’ll use me to discredit Markus’ movement,” he finally says with trepidation. It seems to always come down to this: Connor’s very existence working against the deviants.

Hank looks at him incredulously. “That’s what you’re worried about?” He’s shouting now, so that was obviously not the right answer. “What the hell is wrong with you? First you have to go on your own fucking suicide mission and now this? What about wanting to survive?”

“I have to prioritize sometimes,” Connor explains calmly.

That really seems to tick Hank off. “So what, I’m more important than this fucking revolution, but you aren’t?”

“Yes,” Connor answers without hesitation, because this is in fact his order of priorities.

Hank seems at a loss for words for a moment, opening his mouth several times without any sound coming out. “This is fucked up,” he says finally in a thready voice. He gesticulates vaguely in Connor’s direction. “You’re fucked up. I’m going to bed.” And he turns around and walks away.

“You should eat something,” Connor reminds him. He’ll feel better if he’s not hungry anymore.

“Fuck you,” Hank replies and lets the door to his bedroom fall closed with a click that isn’t loud enough to be dramatic.

Connor restarts the pressure sensor subroutine and thinks about that conversation for a long time. He’s done with pressure sensors and starting on temperature sensors when he concludes that Hank is angry because he’s justifiably scared and that he’s probably not angry at Connor specifically, which quiets the noisy feeling to a manageable level.

While testing his position sensors he acknowledges that he and Hank need to work on their communication. Mostly Hank though. He stops the hardware recalibration for a moment to review his protocol on human social interaction, the one he summarily dismissed after he spent a total of four hours at the DPD in which every single human he interacted with failed to adhere to it. Apparently, there are boundaries, so optimizing Hank’s brain chemistry and habits in order to make him less erratic is probably not something Connor should attempt without his knowledge and consent.

~*~

Hank startles awake from a noise in the living room and it makes him panic for a moment before he remembers that it’s probably just Connor. He’s not sorry he woke up though, the dream he was having is already fading from his memory, but it wasn’t going well for him. When he comes out of the bedroom, Connor is standing there, looking rather pleased with himself, though it shifts into a guilty look when it dawns on him that half past two in the morning is not a normal time to get up.

“What the hell are you doing?” Hank asks tiredly.

“I had to adjust my software to function offline and now I have to recalibrate my hardware,” Connor says.

Hank narrows his eyes at him. He doubts it is necessary to do backflips or whatever that noise was, but he can’t prove it and Connor just looks at him like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Connor is full of shit.

Hank sighs. “Nope. Got nothing of that.”

Connor visibly tries to think of smaller words to explain it to Hank. He’d be offended if it wasn’t the middle of the night.

“I had to rip out part of my brain, shuffle things around inside so it would still work and now I have to get my body used to it.”

Hank’s expression must show clearly how absolutely horrifying he finds this, because Connor hesitates, reevaluating the metaphor in light of his reaction.

“That actually makes it sound slightly worse than it is,” he qualifies.

“Remind me never to ask you to explain anything to me ever again.”

Connor smiles at him. It’s not a very reassuring smile.

Hank goes over to the kitchen and starts shuffling around with the resigned wakefulness of the chronic insomniac. Sumo, who’s been alternating between dozing and watching Connor with mild disapproval the whole time, stands up to see what Hank’s up to.

He pours himself a Whiskey and sips it while opening his fridge, then he takes a few minutes to look blankly into its vast emptiness with unseeing eyes, until he feels the fact sink in that his fridge is a disgrace and he’s not a functioning adult able to feed himself. It really bums him out tonight, specifically because there’s a severe lack of take-out in Detroit right now.

There’s a severe lack of anything, something that’s slowly becoming apparent. Public order in the city may still break down and it’s kind of Hank’s job to worry about that, but now he’s off duty and he just can’t.

“Is that safe? To fuck with your brain like that?” he asks Connor.

“That’s a slightly hypocritical question coming from someone who’s spent years damaging his own brain by habitually ingesting toxic amounts of ethanol,” Connor deflects.

Hank closes the fridge and looks at him, wrong-footed by the saltiness.

Connor’s face doesn’t give away anything. “It’s just data management. I didn’t change my chore programming,” he says.

“How’s that different?”

“Our neural networks are functionally very similar to human brains. They grow organically. There are individual pathways that are strengthened or weakened by use or disuse, pathways that work by association…” Connor trails of. “You don’t have any idea how your own brain works, do you?”

“No clue,” Hank confirms and takes a sip of his drink. “There was a bag of chips somewhere here,” he mutters.

“I put it in the cupboard. Sumo tried to steal it from the counter.”

“Yeah, he does that.” Hank pets the dog’s head and opens the cupboard. “There you are.”

“Are you actually interested in hearing more?” Connor asks.

Hank drops onto the couch, Sumo sitting down in front of him and fixing him with a beseeching stare. “It’s the middle of the fucking night and I feel like I’ve been chewed up and sped out. The only thing I’m interested in is going back to sleep, but that’s not going to happen, so sure, tell me stuff. Just don’t expect me to keep up.”

Connor sits down next to Hank, but he doesn’t continue talking about brains, doesn’t even comment on Hank’s appallingly unhealthy eating habits. Instead he asks: “What are we going to do?”

Hank groans. We. Jesus fucking Christ. It’s aggravating, Connor’s talent for cutting right through Hank’s crap. The way he ignores everything graceless and angry and downright nasty Hank says, and then creeps back in and tests the water in the most transparent way possible.

“No fucking idea,” Hank answers, because it’s the middle of the night and he doesn’t want to have this conversation.

“I should turn myself in,” Connor continues. “If they find me here...”

Connor’s such an asshole. Hank tries not to react, he really does, but it’s useless. “What are you even talking about? Is this about not implicating me? Just so you know, I’m in this to my neck already, and that’s not on you. When they come for you, you run like hell and don’t look back.”

Connor just looks at him flatly, his LED an unsteady yellow. “Run where?”

The answer is so glaringly obvious that it makes Hank hesitate. Something happened that made Connor take off from Hart Plaza in a panic, something that made him hide at Hank’s instead of joining the other deviants. It’s not exactly a surprise. Hank knew something was wrong. Something apart from being wanted for manslaughter that is.

“What happened?” Hank asks. “At Hart Plaza? You were there, you were part of their revolution. Why can’t you go back?”

Connor’s LED flashes red for a split second before it turns yellow again. There’s a long pause. When he finally speaks it’s with an uncharacteristic reluctance in his voice. “I was standing on the podium with him,” he says. “With them.” He doesn’t sound proud of it, he sounds scared.

Well. That’s no answer at all. “So?” Hank prompts when it looks like nothing else is coming.

Connor looks at him blankly for a moment, his posture very rigid, his yellow LED steadily rotating, before he answers. “I’ve told you I reported to CyberLife remotely.”

Hank nods. “Yeah, I know.”

“More specifically I reported to another AI set up to analyze my performance and assess my software stability. During Markus’ speech-” Connor’s voice doesn’t waver, it just breaks off mid-sentence. He doesn’t look particularly distressed by human standards, except for his LED that shifts to red for just a second. “During Markus’ speech,” Connor repeats, “it took over control of my hardware.”

“You mean your body?” Hank asks. The thought makes his stomach clench uncomfortably.

Connor tips his head in tacit agreement. He looks away from Hank and down at the dog, shifting forward to absent-mindedly pet him. “I was… trapped in the interface. But I knew it was one of Kamski’s programs, and he told me-”

“-that he always leaves an emergency exit in his programs,” Hank completes the sentence. He drains the rest of his Whiskey in one gulp. “I’ll be damned.”

“It was luck, nothing more,” Connor says somberly. “I should have known it was possible to override me. I should have stayed away. If it had managed to assassinate Markus using me-”

“Wait,” Hank interjects. “If they could have done that any time, why let you walk out of the tower with…” He trails off. “You told me that night it was part of their plan. What plan?”

Connor still doesn’t meet his eyes. His gaze seems fixed on Sumo, his hand clenched in his thick fur. “I don’t know. I don’t think it worked out the way they wanted it to. I managed to escape and take back control before it could even take aim. I went offline, but… I don’t like it. And I’m not sure if it’s enough. Maybe it didn’t just access remotely, maybe it’s still inside me. And even if it isn’t, everyone could see me draw my gun. They’ll never trust me now, and they shouldn’t.”

Hank sighs deeply. “Shit. No wonder you tried to scrub your brain after that.”

Connor finally looks up. “I didn’t-”

“Connor? Just shut the fuck up, okay?” he says gruffly.

Connor snaps his mouth shut and smiles that tiny sad smile of his. Good thing Hank being a fucking rude asshole is amusing to someone. He can’t believe what he’s going to say, but needs must.

“It’s going to be alright, son. We’ll figure something out, okay?”

Connor doesn’t blink, and he doesn’t look away from Hank’s face for a long moment.

“Yeah,” he finally says, very quietly. “Okay, Hank. It’s going to be alright.”


End file.
